Posted on 01/27/2007 1:36:11 PM PST by tpaine
By Vin Suprynowicz
For years, Garry Watson, 49, of little Bunker, Mo., (population 390) had been squabbling with town officials over the sewage line easement which ran across his property to the adjoining, town-operated sewage lagoon.
Residents say officials grew dissatisfied with their existing easement, and announced they were going to excavate a new sewer line across the landowner's property. Capt. Chris Ricks of the Missouri Highway Patrol reports Watson's wife, Linda, was served with "easement right-of-way papers" on Sept. 6. She gave the papers to Watson when he got home at 5 a.m. the next morning from his job at a car battery recycling plant northeast of Bunker. Watson reportedly went to bed for a short time, but arose about 7 a.m. when the city work crew arrived.
"He told them 'If you come on my land, I'll kill you,' " Bunker resident Gregg Tivnan told me last week. "Then the three city workers showed up with a backhoe, plus a police officer. They'd sent along a cop in a cop car to guard the workers, because they were afraid there might be trouble. Watson had gone inside for a little while, but then he came out and pulled his SKS (semi-automatic rifle) out of his truck, steadied it against the truck, and he shot them."
Killed in the September 7 incident, from a range of about 85 yards, were Rocky B. Gordon, 34, a city maintenance man, and David Thompson, 44, an alderman who supervised public works. City maintenance worker Delmar Eugene Dunn, 51, remained in serious but stable condition the following weekend.
Bunker police Officer Steve Stoops, who drove away from the scene after being shot, was treated and released from a hospital for a bullet wound to his arm and a graze to the neck.
Watson thereupon kissed his wife goodbye, took his rifle, and disappeared into the woods, where his body was found two days later -- dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Following such incidents, the local papers are inevitably filled with well-meaning but mawkish doggerel about the townsfolk "pulling together" and attempting to "heal" following the "tragedy." There are endless expressions of frustration, pretending to ask how such an otherwise peaceful member of the community could "just snap like that."
In fact, the supposedly elusive explanation is right before our eyes.
"He was pushed," Clarence Rosemann -- manager of the local Bunker convenience store, who'd done some excavation work for Watson -- told the big-city reporters from St. Louis. Another area resident, who didn't want to be identified, told the visiting newsmen, "Most people are understanding why Garry Watson was upset. They are wishing he didn't do it, but they are understanding why he did it."
You see, to most of the people who work in government and the media these days -- especially in our urban centers -- "private property" is a concept out of some dusty, 18th century history book. Oh, sure, "property owners" are allowed to live on their land, so long as they pay rent to the state in the form of "property taxes."
But an actual "right" to be let alone on our land to do whatever we please -- always providing we don't actually endanger the lives or health of our neighbors?
Heavens! If we allowed that, how would we enforce all our wonderful new "environmental protection" laws, or the "zoning codes," or the laws against growing hemp or tobacco or distilling whisky without a license, or any of the endless parade of other malum prohibitum decrees which have multiplied like swarms of flying ants in this nation over the past 87 years?
What does it mean to say we have any "rights" or "freedoms" at all, if we cannot peacefully enjoy that property which we buy with the fruits of our labors?
In his 1985 book "Takings," University of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein wrote that, "Private property gives the right to exclude others without the need for any justification.
Indeed, it is the ability to act at will and without need for justification within some domain which is the essence of freedom, be it of speech or of property."
"Unfortunately," replies James Bovard, author of the book "Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen," "federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors are making private property much less private. ...
Park Forest, Ill. in 1994 enacted an ordinance that authorizes warrantless searches of every single-family rental home by a city inspector or police officer, who are authorized to invade rental units 'at all reasonable times.' ... Federal Judge Joan Gottschall struck down the searches as unconstitutional in 1998, but her decision will have little or no effect on the numerous other localities that authorize similar invasions of privacy."
We are now involved in a war in this nation, a last-ditch struggle in which the other side contends only the king's men are allowed to use force or the threat of force to push their way in wherever they please, and that any peasant finally rendered so desperate as to employ the same kind of force routinely employed by our oppressors must surely be a "lone madman" who "snapped for no reason." No, we should not and do not endorse or approve the individual choices of folks like Garry Watson. But we are still obliged to honor their memories and the personal courage it takes to fight and die for a principle, even as we lament both their desperate, misguided actions ... and the systematic erosion of our liberties which gave them rise.
If someone told you they would kill you for setting foot on their property and you chose to ignore that, I would rate your actions as foolish, without espousing the idea of someone killing you. I suppose you would also ignore "Beware of Dog" signs, "Danger High Voltage", "Achtung: Minen!", and "Do not use this product while taking a shower" as well.
He warned them and they proceeded without good judgement, imo.
One thing I've noticed throughout this (fairly long) thread is how many people mention the tragic murder of the "maintenance men", the "working men" - - it is instructive that not one single poster has noted with any concern that a politician was also killed in the confrontation.
Sometimes a lot depends on how they ask.
What is your breaking point? When is enough, enough? I fear we're getting awfully close to that breaking point where hell will be unleashed upon those that would tread upon our freedoms.
As usual, you're dead on the money about property rights. A man's home is his castle, and he has a right and responsibility to defend his castle against those who invade...regardless if the invader is a scumabg breaking down his door in the middle of the night, or a bureaucrat carrying a briefcase.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Please tell me how else to interpret your post other than to think that you condone civil violence? Your 'wrong to shoot the messenger' leads one to believe that you would support going down to city hall and shooting the head guy would be justified.
"However, if what I understand to be the case really is the case, damn if someone wouldn't pay for encroaching on my property. Maybe it was wrong to shoot the messenger for the message, but to paraphrase John Wayne in "The Green Berets", sometimes due process is a bullet."
I have voiced neither approval nor condemnation of Watson's actions, but was called a nut for condoning the shooting of those that come to repair the problems. As I recall, Watson didn't shoot the ones who came to repair the overflowing sewer. He paid them for their work. He shot the ones who came to steal his property.
You are mixing apples and oranges. Warning someone that you are going to kill them does not allow you to murder them.
--He shot the ones who came to steal his property.--
They were there NOT to steal his property but to fix the problem.
Put me on any list you like. I said what I said. If you must read more into it than that, it's your problem.
They were not there to clean up the mess of raw sewage they'd already created on his property. They were there to run more raw sewage across his problem, without an easement this time.
"...the rights of the people against the encroachments of the government."
Now t...are you going to make the argument that the people who constructed the Bill of Rights were wrong about its intent?
You simply don't understand their world luis. -- None of them ever imagined that some day we would have individual businessmen, - like you, - intent on denying a fellow- citizens right to carry arms in his vehicle.
The founders would have rode you out of town on a rail for posting a 'no guns allowed' sign on your business.
Must have been a freudian slip.
--without an easement this time. --
Huh? They HAD an easement.
I'm not embarrassed by my comment but by the trend in this thread.
--As usual, you're dead on the money about property rights. A man's home is his castle, and he has a right and responsibility to defend his castle against those who invade...regardless if the invader is a scumabg breaking down his door in the middle of the night, or a bureaucrat carrying a briefcase.--
Better look up the laws on easements before you go shooting the utility guy.
--I'm not embarrassed by my comment but by the trend in this thread.--
I am too. Too many blowhards going around supporting murder.
If someone told you they would kill you for setting foot on their property, would you ignore that?
The warning does not make his actions justified, but by ignoring the warning, imo, some culpability falls on the 'victims'. At no time did I say warning them made what he did right. I DID say they were stupid to ignore the warning.
Maybe the difference is lost on you.
If you open the panel marked "high voltage" and get fried as a result, is the electricity wrong or right for cooking you?
It does not matter. You ignored the warning.
But what I DID say is that there was likley more to this story than met my 'page'. No reasonable person would normally shoot people over such a matter as a hole in their property, especially if there is a legal easement, unless there is something else involved. So rather than carp at me for acknowledging the guy gave them a warning and they ignored it (and trying to twist that into my approving of his actions), if you have some greater knowledge of the situation, maybe you would like to share it with us.
They had an easement for the property they had already destroyed. They weren't happy with it after they destroyed it, so they decided to take more property. They notified his wife of this, hours before they began digging up a new location on his property, which was separate from their easement.
-They were not there to clean up the mess of raw sewage they'd already created on his property. They were there to run more raw sewage across his property--
Wrong.
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